How to change factions' turn order

[Okmin]

Ever noticed how Britain always goes first after you hit End Turn? Then comes France, Austria, etc until the Pirates are always the last faction to get their turn. In RTI, the order's completely different.

Here's how to change the order factions take their turns in. You'll probably only want/need to do this if you turn order already changed, which usually happens if you make a hybrid startpos.esf using HusserITW's (awesome) tutorial (it happens because savegames put the faction you're playing as at the top of the turn order, and when you make a hybrid it keeps that change).

You will need:
Something to edit XML files (I'm using Notepad++, but any text editor works)
taw's ESF <-> XML converter
HusserITW's ESF Total Editor
This tutorial will assume you got those working and know how to use them.

First use the Total Editor to convert your startpos.esf to xml. Open the XML folder, and find your converted files. Open that folder and then the one labeled Factions.


All the xml files are numbered - the number is their position in the turn order. To change when that faction takes their turn, just rename the xml file.


The only problem is you have no idea which file is which faction. Just open it and scroll down a bit. In the picture, #2 turns out to be France.


Once you find the faction you want to move, just rename it to whatever number you want it to be. You also have to rename any other ones that would need to have their order changed.

Example: If I wanted to move faction-0004 (United Provinces) to the beginning of the load order, I would rename it to faction-1 (because faction-0001.xml already exists) and then rename faction-0003 to -0004, -0002 to -0003, -0001 to -0002, and finally faction-1 to faction-0001.
The result is that UP goes first, Britain second, France third, and Austria fourth.

And to play your new startpos, just use the Total Editor to convert your XML files back into ESF.

[shokh]

You can do this a lot easier for the most factions.

Open the startpos.esf with ESF editor.
- campaign_preopen_map_info
- faction_info
Here you can see the factions, when you use 1.4.5 esf you will see the faction-names in the directory, with 1.4.3 only when you open it.
The red marked number is the number of the rotation place from this factions in the campaign menu cycle.
This is for example the early campaign.
1 - Britain
2 - 13 Colonies
3 - France
...
...
Factions the are not playable are also listed but will be omitted in the campaign menu.
In this case 13 colonies are not playable = 1. Britan, 2. France
You can cycle the number as you want. Numbers are in early 1-55. Simple swap the numbers between 2 factions.
Only when you will change Britain, to give it away from position1, you have to do it in another way - like you did for example.
Btw the second number below are the regions the faction hold for displaying in the campaign menu.

[The Useless Member]

Thanks for this.

I don't find any problem with the turn order in ETW, except that the Mughals are in the "minor country cluster".

Kinda annoying.